Patricia Kullberg hosts this episode of the Old Mole, which includes the following segments:
Portraits in Red: Laurie Mercier speaks with Indigenous artist Nayana LaFond, whose current exhibit, Portraits in Red: Missing & Murdered Indigenous People Painting Project, is showing through May 7 at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center in Newport, Oregon. LaFond discusses the lack of attention to the thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous people who have been silenced by the unusually high rate of violence and low rate of effort to solve past crimes and prevent future ones. LaFond will be speaking at Washington State University Vancouver, 3 – 4:15 p.m. Tuesday March 21, in the Multimedia Classroom Building, Room 16.
“…This project is a labor of love. It has found me and inspired a mission of raising awareness and honoring the memory of those lost. I hope it helps those still here heal, even if only a very small amount. Perhaps it will help someone still suffering gain the courage to get help. You are not alone, you are not without hope, we are your sisters and we are here beside you.”—Nayana LaFond
Social Reproduction and Trans Liberation: Attacks on trans lives are attacks on collective sociality and social provisioning. Drawing on Feminism for the 99% and on recent articles in Tempest and Spectre, among other sources, Frann Michel explains how attempts to maintain gender oppression and the ideal of the bourgeois nuclear family are part of neoliberal attacks on the public sphere and workers' empowerment.
Gun Control Remains Elusive : Calls for legislative action in response to the endless waves of mass shootings in the US tend to focus on mental health issues rather than the gun industry. In their Left & the Law segment, Jan Haaken and Mike Snedeker look at the history of protections from immunity granted to gun manufacturers in the US and recent lawsuits that challenge those protections. They discuss an important case filed by Mexico against a gun manufacturer in the US and the gun law passed in Oregon in November that is currently in limbo in the courts. They also take up challenges for the left in framing the epidemic of gun violence in the US.
- KBOO